- Pakistan: Khan moved to hospital from jail over health concerns
Source: France 24 [French state media]
“Pakistan’s Supreme Court ordered on Tuesday that jailed former prime minister Imran Khan be moved to hospital for medical checks, after a petition by his lawyers over claims of poor health. Justice Shahid Waheed said 73-year-old Khan, who has been in jail since 2023 on corruption charges, will be shifted in the next two days to Shifa International hospital in the capital Islamabad. Khan and his wife and spiritual guide Bushra Bibi were both sentenced late last year to 17 years behind bars. … Khan was prime minister from 2018 to 2022 before being removed in a no-confidence vote during a political crisis over tensions between his government and the South Asian country’s powerful military establishment.” (08/18/26)
- Disney and ABC sue FCC, seeking to stop early license renewal process
Source: NBC News
“The Walt Disney Company, ABC and a number of its stations on Tuesday sued the Federal Communications Commission, seeking to stop an early license renewal process that they say is an attack by the Trump administration. In April, the FCC ordered Disney’s eight owned-and-operated television stations to file their broadcast license renewals ahead of schedule. That order came amid a probe into ABC’s ‘The View’ program, as well as a long-running investigation into diversity, equity and inclusion practices at Disney. All eight of the ABC stations whose licenses were put in jeopardy by the FCC are part of Tuesday’s lawsuit. The move from the FCC also came after the White House and President Donald Trump himself assailed ABC late-night comedian Jimmy Kimmel for a joke about the first lady Melania Trump.” (08/18/26)
- Germany: Court convicts Ukrainian man over Russian sabotage plot
Source: South China Morning Post [Hong Kong]
“A German court on Tuesday handed a jail sentence of one year and three months to a Ukrainian man for spying for Russia and helping prepare possible acts of sabotage. The court in Stuttgart acquitted two other Ukrainian men aged 22 and 25 who were on trial for the same plot, which involved posting test packages containing GPS trackers in March last year to Ukraine. The plan was aimed at scoping out possibilities for ‘disrupting transport and infrastructure’ and was ultimately directed by a ‘Russian state entity’, the court said.” (08/18/26)
- Prosecution rests in Lindsay Clancy murder trial
Source: United Press International
“The prosecution rested Monday in the murder trial of Lindsay Clancy over the killings of her three children in Massachusetts. Clancy, 36, is accused of fatally strangling her children — 5-year-old Cora, 3-year-old Dawson and 8-month-old Callan — at their home on Jan. 24, 2023. … The prosecution said Clancy committed the killings while her then-husband Patrick was out of the house. She then jumped out of the second-story window of the house and was paralyzed from the waist down. The defense does not dispute that Clancy killed her children but argues that she should not be held criminally responsible because she was suffering from bipolar disorder and postpartum psychosis.” (08/17/26)
- Dog bites man: Anti-vote-by-mail politician votes by mail again
Source: Politico
“President Donald Trump voted by mail in Florida’s Republican primary, according to local voting records, even as he continues to rail against mail-in voting with wide-ranging allegations of fraud. Voting records from Palm Beach County show the president requested his ballot in late July and it was returned on Aug. 13. This is not the first time that Trump has voted by mail in his adopted home state. He voted by mail in a special election in Palm Beach County earlier this year. … Trump continues to rail at the use of mail-in voting and says the current practice should be limited to those who in the military, are traveling or have a disability or illness.” (08/17/26)
https://www.politico.com/news/2026/08/17/trump-vote-by-mail-primaries-florida-01039292
- US Judge Blocks Trump Administration’s Plan to Scrap FBI Headquarters Move to Maryland
Source: US News & World Report
“A federal judge on Monday blocked a Trump administration plan to relocate the new FBI headquarters to Washington, D.C., rather than in nearby Maryland, which had been picked in 2023 to host the building. U.S. District Judge Theodore Chuang sided with the Democratic-led state of Maryland and Prince George’s County in ruling the administration had unlawfully scrapped a plan to construct a new FBI headquarters in Greenbelt, Maryland, and diverted money approved by Congress for that project to an alternate location, the Ronald Reagan Building in Washington. The judge said the selection of Ronald Reagan Building violated measures passed by Congress in 2022 and 2023 that required the General Services Administration to pick from one of three short-listed sites outside of Washington.” (08/17/26)
- Inequality Is Not the Problem
Source: Foundation for Economic Education
by Lipton Matthews“Few slogans travel through modern politics with as much confidence and as little scrutiny as the claim that inequality is a social ill to be corrected at nearly any cost. Yet a fair reading of the evidence suggests the opposite conclusion. Inequality is not a defect in the system. It is the primary mechanism by which human achievement compounds, wealth spreads, and living standards rise for the great majority of people who never come close to the top of the distribution.” (08/18/26)
- Your $20 Burrito Was Made in Washington
Source: The American Conservative
by W James Antle III“he Flying Burrito Brothers were a classic country rock band that was at its best in the late 1960s and early 1970s. Evidently, later configurations persisted for years afterward even without the participation of key original members. There is now a new reason for the band, in whatever form it currently exists, to retire the name: It more accurately describes members of the very online conservative movement in the year of our Lord 2026. … even the most sage counsel, accompanied by detailed studies of fast-casual menu prices, ignores the macro-level problems. The country did not Door Dash its way to the highest inflation rate in 41 years under former President Joe Biden. Nor did it Uber Eats its way into a quagmire in Iran that has begun to consume the second presidency of Biden’s predecessor-turned-successor.” (08/18/26)
https://www.theamericanconservative.com/your-20-burrito-was-made-in-washington/
- Trump Courts Another Legal Defeat on Birthright Citizenship
Source: Reason
by Damon Root“Less than two months after the U.S. Supreme Court ruled his executive order on birthright citizenship to be unconstitutional, President Donald Trump has issued not one but two new executive orders on birthright citizenship that largely retread the same illegal grounds that the Supreme Court already rejected in Trump v. Barbara. Is this just a futile outburst from a consummate sore loser? Or does Trump actually stand a chance of faring any better in court this time around?” (08/18/26)
https://reason.com/2026/08/18/trump-courts-another-legal-defeat-on-birthright-citizenship/
- You Didn’t Get Sick. You Got Enrolled.
Source: Brownstone Institute
by Josh Stylman“Your kid can’t sit still, so the doctor writes a script before asking what he eats or how many hours he stares at a screen. He’s not broken. He’s a seven-year-old boy. Your buddy can’t get it up, so he reaches for the blue pill instead of putting down the beer and chips. Your sister-in-law wants the influencer body, so she injects herself into a thinner version of being sick. A different disease, dressed up as discipline. Can’t sleep? Ambien. Anxious? Xanax. Sad for more than a week? Antidepressant. It’s easy: a fifteen-minute appointment, prescription in hand before you’ve finished saying what’s wrong with you.” (08/18/26)
https://brownstone.org/articles/you-didnt-get-sick-you-got-enrolled/
- Randy Fine: Terrorist By Any Definition
Source: Libertarian Institute
by Jack Hunter“Rep. Randy Fine (R-FL) posted the following on Twitter/X Thursday night: ‘It’s no longer Republicans vs. Democrats. It’s Americans who love this country vs. terrorists who want to destroy it.’ … Fine is a vocal Zionist who has repeatedly called for the total destruction of Gaza, has dehumanized Palestinians, has said all Muslims must be ‘destroyed,’ and dismissed the deaths of innocent non-combatants such as women and children. Which leads to the obvious question: Who is an actual ‘terrorist,’ here?” (08/18/26)
https://libertarianinstitute.org/articles/randy-fine-terrorist-by-any-definition/
- You were our countrymen – the limits of evil
Source: The Price of Liberty
by Nathan Barton“Massachusetts is not alone among the 50 States in declaring that it is okay (with a doctor’s agreement) to kill. To kill an unborn, innocent child who is viable, able to be born (delivered) and live. Who presents no true threat to their mother, or at least her health. This is monstrous. This is evil. This is falsely labeled liberty when in reality it is the opposite: active, premeditated violent and fatal aggression against an innocent person. It is, actually, close to slavery. (If actually worse: we submit that killing someone is worse than just enslaving them.)” (08/17/26)
https://thepriceofliberty.org/2026/08/17/we-know-thee-not-the-limits-of-evil/
- Which Countries Are Actually Socialist?
Source: Independent Institute
by Scott Beyer“Socialism is having another moment in U.S. politics. Politicians and activists increasingly describe themselves as socialist while their opponents use the same label as a term of condemnation. Yet both sides employ the word so loosely as to become meaningless. Sweden gets called socialist because it has high taxes and universal health care; Venezuela does because the government nationalized industries and imposed price controls. The rise of the phrase ‘democratic socialism’, which lumps together two unconnected words, adds to the confusion and makes debate difficult. Before deciding whether socialism works, we ought to determine what it actually is—and which countries practice it.” (08/17/26)
https://www.independent.org/article/2026/08/17/which-countries-are-actually-socialist/
- Utilities Want More Control to Meet Growing Energy Demand
Source: Show-Me Institute
by Avery Frank“Specifically, utilities want to reduce competition by halting competitive bidding for multi-state transmission projects, as the bidding process can take 16 to 20 months. If approved, the utilities would be the default developers of those projects, with no competition involved. In Missouri, both Ameren and Evergy, our state’s largest utilities, operate in multiple states and would gain that right of first refusal. For starters, it’s worth acknowledging that 16 to 20 months is a long time to select a developer, and these companies are right that we quickly need more energy to serve big new customers. This situation illustrates why Missouri is between a rock and a hard place in its efforts to modernize our electricity grid. … There has to be a better way—and fortunately, there is. Missouri instead could allow private electricity grids (also known as consumer regulated electricity, or CRE) for large customers like data centers.” (08/17/26)
- Awake to Evasion 1.0
Source: Common Sense
by Paul Jacob“There are people who still debate the term ‘woke.’ From the beginning, defenders of woke judgments, discourse, and activism claimed it was ‘just good manners’; others said it didn’t exist, a mere figment of ‘right-wing paranoia.’ Truth is, it was a new, trendy term used to replace ‘social justice’ and the peculiar bent and activism methods of ‘social justice warriors,’ after ‘SJW’ became fodder for ridicule by collegiate leftism’s opponents.” (08/17/26)
- Republic of Korea soldiers during combined wet gap crossing training Is Trump stumbling into a wiser North Korea policy?
Source: Responsible Statecraft
by James Park“His decision to scale down military drills could have real upsides — so long as he is willing to coordinate with Seoul to make the most of it.” (08/17/26)
https://responsiblestatecraft.org/us-korea-military-exercise/
- Show-Me Institute Podcast, 08/18/26
Source: Show-Me Institute
“Why Young People Are Turning Away from Capitalism with Robert C. Enlow.” (08/18/26)
- The Daily Blast With Greg Sargent, 08/18/26
Source: The New Republic
“Trump Rage Erupts Over Iran as Aides Leak Embarrassing Truth: He Lost.” (08/18/26)
https://newrepublic.com/article/214443/trump-rage-erupts-iran-aides-leak-embarrassing-truth-lost
- Antiwar News with Dave DeCamp, 08/17/26
Source: Antiwar.com
“Kushner, Netanyahu Agree Israel Will Continue Gaza Strikes, Trump Threatens To Bomb Oman, and More.” (08/17/26)
- Pink Flame of Liberty, 08/17/26
Source: Pink Flame of Liberty
“The Case for Christian Nationalism Discussion: Christian Comfort Privilege (pt. 6).” (08/17/26)
- Nick Cleveland-Stout on The Kyle Anzalone Show
Source: Libertarian Institute
“We sit down with journalist Nick Cleveland-Stout of Responsible Statecraft and Drop Site News to trace how Israeli influence operations are pushing narratives about Gaza directly into the systems people now use as ‘truth machines,’ from chatbots to AI-powered search.” (08/17/26)
- Real Unity, episode 20
Source: Free the People
“Holy Cow: Why Are Steers Lactating? | Mollie Engelhart.” (08/17/26)